Yeah, this one’s been all over the news this last week, but I figured I’d provide the link here as well. Whether you were a fan of the original, or if this will be your first experience with the King’s Quest games, this high-quality fan-made remake looks pretty dang awesome:

On top of that, the big news over the last couple of weeks is that indie developer Telltale Games is rebooting the series, as they did with Tales of Monkey Island recently.

If you really want to check out the original series in all it’s 1980s / 1990s glory, all eight games are available in three packs via GOG.COM.

I gotta tell ya… after enduring more than a decade of hearing adventure games called a “dead genre,” I’m pretty thrilled by the comeback I’m seeing. Telltale Games is on fire, the newGemini Rue from Wadjet Eye Games looks nothing short of spectacular, and a new generation of gamers is getting introduced to some classics via remakes (official and unofficial) and re-releases of old classics over digital platforms.

And then there are the stalwarts like Frogwares and Microids who’ve been pushing adventure games with little fanfare for years now which appear to be getting a little more attention lately. Maybe it’s because of the casual games that have been borrowing from the genre? I dunno. I’m not sure if it’s time to party like it’s 1992 or anything, but it’s great to see so much happening now.

Not keen on Telltales offerings, but the likes of AGDI and Infamous Adventures are producing exactly what I’m looking for.

In honour of this new release, I’m playing my way through their remakes once more, and completed KQ1 again yesterday (can’t remember how many times now, both original and remake!).

It’ll be interesting to see how the game compares to IA’s KQ3 game, and if you’re into this sort of thing, IA are working on a Space Quest 2 remake which hopefully will be released this year.

JadedDM said,

Oh, cool. I remember playing one of the King’s Quest games ages ago. Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow…or something like that. It was so very unlike any other game I had played back then, having had little experience in point-and-click adventure games. Anyway, I think I’ll give the remake a try, sounds like fun. Thanks for the link.

For me, I have two nostalgic epochs of adventure gaming: The heyday of text-adventures from around 1981 to 1984 (when KQ1 was first released) – pretty much the Era of Infocom (plus games like Wizard & the Princess from Sierra), and then this brilliantly awesome period from around 1990 – 1994.

The latter period is also when I played catch-up with some older games at the time, but holy crap! Neuromancer. Monkey Island 1 and 2. Loom. King’s Quest games. Space Quest games. Robin Hood: Conquest of the Longbow (a less popular one I *loved*). Spellcasting 101. Eric the Unready. The Adventures of Willy Beamish. The Day of the Tentacle. Gabriel Knight. Tex Murphy. Police Quest.

Talk about a golden era of gaming goodness! Like the RPGs that were coming out in droves around that time, it seemed like it would never end. We didn’t know how good we had it, I guess.

trudodyr said,

I have always loved Sierra’s QfG series most (well, except for the last part). When AGDI recently v2 of their QfG2 remake, I played through the tetralogy once more. But of course their other efforts are also commendable, as will be the upcoming ones (KQ4, SQ2&3), I’m sure.

Adventure games have been especially popular in Germany, I think, and so there’s been a constant stream of very well made indie titles during the dry spell that was the past decade or so. Some of them have also seen international releases, but usually well below average radar.